


caged bird fly

by andchaos



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Coda, M/M, Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 21:04:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4452323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchaos/pseuds/andchaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Hey, Mickey?”<br/>Mickey blows a long stream of smoke up at the night sky and scratches at the beginnings of a beard, just starting up on his jaw. “What?”<br/>“You ever been in love?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	caged bird fly

          Ian rolls onto his stomach, looking over at the boy beside him. The moonlight casts Mickey’s face into so many new angles of light, adding shadows, changing him, turning him into a thousand different versions of himself. Scared Mickey, who would run to juvie to avoid getting outed; bashful Mickey, whose gaze softened for just a second before Ian eased his hand away from the glass; happy Mickey, laying out on the grass with him, eyes closed and smoking his cigarette like there is nothing more important in the universe. All his different facets realigning, reshaping, constantly surprising Ian with who he will be today, tonight, tomorrow. Most days he’s cagey. Some days he’s just calm.

          Tonight, he’s Ian’s.

          “Hey, Mickey?”

          Mickey blows a long stream of smoke up at the night sky and scratches at the beginnings of a beard, just starting up on his jaw. “What?”

          “You ever been in love?”

          Mickey sits up quickly at that, pushing himself up and glaring at Ian where he is watching him steadily, propped up on his elbows. No, not glaring—his narrowed eyes seem more clinical, studying Ian like he wants to sort through his intentions, searching for something deeper. Beneath it, his darting eyes seem terrified.

          Ian isn’t stupid, and after fifteen seconds of letting Mickey panic, he sits up too and eases his fears, and pries his cigarette away from his fingers.

          “My sister,” he pauses to take a drag, “thinks she’s in love with this guy she’s been seeing. They’ve been together for awhile, off and on, you know, but—” he shrugs, takes another drag, “ – I don’t trust him. I don’t know, I don’t think she does either. Something’s off about him, and…can you be in love with someone who keeps secrets?”

          There’s a pause. “Keeping secrets from her?” Mickey asks then. He leans over to take his cigarette back and Ian is too shocked that Mickey is even entertaining this conversation to stop him or protest, and he releases it.

          “Keeping secrets from everyone,” Ian says slowly. He spreads his arms wide like he can encompass the entire world. When he drops them back into his lap, they slap against his bare calves loudly in the silence.

          Mickey just raises his eyebrows and looks away, out across the baseball field in front of them.

          “It doesn’t matter.  Love’s a fucking trap, man.” He leans back on his hands and tips his head back, blowing out more smoke and watching it swirl away from him. Ian is about to look away, expecting him to either end the conversation or start talking about how Valentine’s Day is made up by corporations to cultivate nonexistent emotions and prey on unsuspecting victims, when Mickey rolls his head to look at him, a small smirk playing at the corners of his lips. “I know you believe in all that crazy romance novel bullshit, don’t you, though? Fairy tale endings, ha. Seriously, that’s fucking hilarious. It’s almost cute, really.”

          Ian sets his jaw and tries not to pout. Tries not to let his chin jut stubbornly because he knows Mickey will see through him too easily then.

          “What’s so funny about that?” he demands anyway. “You don’t think people can fall in love?”

          “People _can_ ,” Mickey allows. “But not us.” Ian’s heart stutters for a second, but Mickey doesn’t seem to notice. If he does, he goes on anyway. “Around here you’re just sad until the sex is good enough that you can pretend nothing’s wrong for long enough not to want to strangle them, or yourself. Maybe you get hitched, act like you’re happy to see that same damn face in the morning every fucking day, then pop out a few kids and trap them in this same shitty spiral we’re all stuck in. Then you die.”

          Annoyance builds up heavy behind his eyes as Mickey speaks, and Ian wants to shake him. Of course Mickey would believe something as wildly misguided as that. He grits his teeth.

          “So what? Only people with money get to be happy?”

          “Money’s got fuck all to do with it. It’s this fucking neighborhood. Shit, only people not stuck around here get to stop struggling to survive long enough to look for anything else,” Mickey says. He sounds so matter of fact, and Ian needs to stop and breathe for a second before he shoves Mickey onto his back and does something stupid, like hit him, or kiss him.

          He settles for shaking his head and rolling back onto his back, digging the heels of his palms into his temples. Mickey seems unaffected, and he settles back on his hands and looks away, still up at the stars above them. Ian momentarily envies them—they’re far enough away that they can’t possibly be hearing the bullshit Mickey’s spouting.

          “I don’t believe that,” Ian says finally. Mickey looks surprised when he meets his eyes. He probably thought the conversation was over. “That’s crap, Mickey. Complete fucking crap. Just because we’re fucked on the daily by everything around us doesn’t mean we don’t get to be happy with _who_ ’s around us. I mean, that’s the whole _point_.”

          Mickey just snorts. “Whatever, Gallagher. Find me someone who sticks the fuck around long enough to deal with all this shit, maybe I’ll reconsider. But I ain’t seen it yet.”

          _Ain’t seen it yet_ , Ian thinks to himself. Thinks that Mickey hasn’t been looking very closely, probably. Thinks that he isn’t sure who’s right.

          “You are so fucked in the head,” he says anyway, laughing a little.

          Mickey laughs too. “Fuck you.” He makes a flicking gesture at Ian’s head. “We didn’t all grow up on Disney movies, asswipe.”

          “I knew you were a tragicomedy kind of guy,” Ian teases.

          Mickey kicks him, and when Ian laughs, he sticks his cigarette between his lips and uses his newly freed hands to wrestle Ian’s arms down as he crawls on top of him and shoves him into the grass. Ian rolls them once and gets in a few good jabs before Mickey gets back on top and pins him down. Mickey’s fingers tickle his palm and they’re both laughing and Ian’s trying not to get ash in his face where it’s crumbling off of Mickey’s cigarette, and his stomach feels simultaneously like light and like lead.

          “My God, you’re an ass,” Mickey says.

          He’s still smiling though, when he rolls off of Ian and plops down hard on the ground beside him and goes back to smoking and watching the sky. Ian tucks his arm behind his head and doesn’t bother hiding his unabashed staring, because Mickey’s grin is making some of the heavy sickness in Ian’s stomach go away and he feels a little more like air every time that smile widens.

          “What the fuck are you looking at me like that for?” Mickey demands suddenly. Ian jolts, not having realized that Mickey was watching him back.

          “Nothing,” he sighs, scrubbing a hand through his hair. He feels like he needs to get his breath back, even though he hasn’t been doing anything but a little playful fighting.

          Mickey’s look of irritation turns into a smirk as he sits back up. He flicks the butt of his cigarette away from him, and they both watch the ember hit the grass and fizzle out before looking back at each other. Mickey raises his eyebrows.

          “Are you done with the philosophizing, then, Wordsworth? Because I’ve got something you can show your love to, if you’re looking.”

          He doesn’t give Ian a chance to ask before he climbs back on top of him, this time with a playful look in his eyes when he grabs Ian’s hands and puts them on his own ass, and Ian breaks out laughing.

          Maybe Mickey knows it, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he just wants to pretend not to know, because he can’t take it right now. But god, Ian intends to have him for much, much longer than just for tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> i literally don't know why this happened I just woke up in the middle of the night and started writing s2 fic. literally.  
> anyways......okay. [hmu](http://absolutqueen.tumblr.com)
> 
> oh, also. there were so many reasons i chose wordsworth. he's strong/masculine when he's expected to be anything but, he prefers casual language over fancy shit, favors feeling/intuition over reason. plus mickey's smart enough to know him, but he's not super obscure. also he's the first one that came to mind and turns out he was born in _cockermouth_ , how great is that? i'm a child. [hmu](http://absolutqueen.tumblr.com) anyway


End file.
